This invention relates generally to a fire hydrant and water meter manufactured and installed in combination and more particularly to a water meter with integral fire hydrant that can easily be placed in use for residential water supply.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that homeowners in rural and urban areas with distant fire hydrants need a new method of water delivery in the case of fire. Presently, in case of fire, the water department must bill the fire department for the water used. Because the amount of water cannot be measured at the time of the fire with the fire hydrants now in use, the amount of water must be estimated. Therefore, water departments set a high, standard route. This is a very inadequate system.
The installation of fire hydrants in residential areas is very expensive at the present time. Thus, the placement of a more inexpensive fire hydrant is required. Further, the repair and maintenance of fire hydrants is quite expensive because motorists run over them in vehicles and they must be repaired or replaced. Also, this will often result in many hundreds of gallons of water being wasted before the repair can be performed. Further, during the summer months, water departments have problems with unauthorized persons turning the fire hydrants on.
Fire hydrants are particularly acute problems in rural areas. The cost of ordinary fire hydrants are just too great to have one in front of each house. As a result, homeowners in rural areas are forced to pay higher homeowner insurance premiums. A lower premium is available for homeowners with fire hydrants near their homes.
Fire departments also have problems with fire hydrants in several instances. Often, fire hydrants are placed across the road from houses. Thus, the fire department must lay their hoses hundreds of feet, and, at times, across a road. This creates a tremendous traffic problem. Fire departments have also been known to encounter vandalism such as welding the caps on the fire hydrants closed. Still a greater problem is that firemen sometimes find the water pressure inadequate at certain fire hydrants. Thus, the water supplied from the hydrant is insufficient to put out the fire.
Conversely, gauges that measure large flow rates of water are not accurate at a low flow rate, while gauges that measure low flow rates well do not accurately measure the flow rate required during a fire. Therefore, some individuals need a fire hydrant through which unmetered water can flow.
Much development and disclosure has occurred independently for fire hydrants and water meters. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,104,554 issued to F. H. Mueller and J. J. Smith on Sept. 24, 1963, discloses a fire hydrant. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 3,439,938 issued to J. T. Dunton on Apr. 22, 1969, also discloses a fire hydrant. However, no developments have been made that combine a water meter and a fire hydrant in residential application to solve problems unique to residential homeowners. Also, no attempts have been disclosed to develop an inexpensive hydrant that can be placed in every residential water line.
Accordingly, it is an object to the present invention to provide a convenient and inexpensive fire hydrant for residential homeowners.
Another advantage of the present invention is to provide an integrated water meter within a fire hydrant so that water departments can more accurately gauge water use.
Still a further object of the invention is to provide a unitarily molded fire hydrant and water meter that can be installed by a water department very easily.
Still a further objective is to provide the capability for rural, residential homeowners to have a fire hydrant in a location proximate to their home.
Still a further objective is to provide the water company with a means of controlling or gauging the flow of water out of the hydrant.